It Looked Different on the Model (20 page)

“That was terrible,” my husband said to the man. “You should call the police.”

He nodded, and we left the restaurant and headed directly across the street. I walked quickly, herding Nick in front of me to hurry up and get to the safety of the car. I couldn’t believe that those assholes put that in front of my nephew, just a little kid. Put that there and let him see that, let him hear it, a kid who, up until three minutes ago, thought tiny spiders on the ceiling were the biggest things to be afraid of. For what seemed like a very long time in that diner, I had the feeling that we might well end up as Flannery O’Connor characters on vacation. I didn’t know what these guys were capable of or if they had anything tucked into their waistbands or not. I had no idea how far their anger would take them. All I knew was if you could bust into a restaurant and start shouting blatant threats and racial epithets—not to mention doing it in front of a child—your range probably knew very little bounds and nothing was off the map.

“You okay, Nick?” I asked.

He looked at me, took a deep breath, and nodded.

“I thought I was going to poop my pants,” he said as he reached for the car’s rear door, and the honesty of my eleven-year-old nephew allowed the three of us to burst into nervous laughter as we got into the car.

––

My sister, her husband, and my younger nephew, David, flew into town a day after we returned home. I knew that Nick couldn’t wait for them to come, and I couldn’t blame him. I mean, here we had promised him this awesome vacation, and, instead, in the last three days I antagonized him into touching fake scrotum, he stood up to a huge wave because he believed he was already a dead man and the sea might as well take him, we ruined his shoes, made him go to the bowels of the Earth to see a giant sea lion hurl, and gave him a front-row seat to his first hate crime. Great vacation.

The first thing I said to my sister when she got off the plane was, “Nick started a tab,” and when I explained to her that she neglected to pack him more clothing than was required for a day, she looked at me like I was insane.

“Look,” I said, as I pointed to Nick in his Bigfoot shirt and new shoes. “Recognize any of that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “He had so many clothes in that bag I almost couldn’t get it closed. Most of his clothes were in the big pocket. Didn’t you check?”

And, as it turned out, that was true. There were shirts, pajamas, and pants underneath several pairs of socks and underwear, which, alarmingly, he never used enough of to see what was underneath. How was I supposed to know? I trusted the kid. I figured if you’re old enough to go to the bathroom for forty minutes with the door closed and you really
are
just reading a magazine, you’re old enough to figure out what a pair of pants looks like folded up.

We headed back out to the coast, where we had rented a cottage near the beach. When we’d unpacked, my sister suggested we take a stroll on the boardwalk that we had just driven past
and mentioned something about seeing pedal boats. Frankly, I can’t say that I was fan of pedal boats, but if that’s what family vacations were made out of, I could use some schooling, unless there was a Nazi Youth rally or a cross-burning happening nearby that I could throw us into the middle of.

My husband and I were first and got into a tiny two-seater; we got a brief lesson on how to direct the rudder and were off for a twenty-five-dollar-an-hour pedal-boat ride. My sister and her family were slotted for the four-seater boat.

“Have fun,” my brother-in-law said, waving us off with a smile that was suspiciously too wide as the pedal-boat guy pushed our boat away from the dock. “Remember that I predicted this would be all my fault.”

Puzzled, we started paddling. It was a beautiful day, so we just sat back and made it to the far end of the inlet in about a half hour, then made our way back. My sister’s boat was nowhere in sight, but I assumed they had headed off in the opposite direction and were doing their own thing. I was pretty sure by the time we all got back to the dock, Nick would have told his parents what an awful time he had with us, how we ruined everything that could have been fun.

But as we got closer, it was clear to see that my sister’s boat was only about thirty feet away from the dock. Well, I figured, if you have four people pedaling, you can make way better time than two slowpokes can. My sister’s family was singing, and she was standing up and waving something, as if she was leading them in song.

Which I knew was absolutely implausible, given the fact that, on a good day, anyone with our DNA would rather eat one of their own than break into song. Additionally, I understand the call of my own pack, and it was clear that those
hyenic yapping noises had a different sort of origin and a far more nefarious translation.

As we approached, it became apparent they were pedaling in circles, over and over again, a result of the rudder getting stuck in one unfortunate position next to my unknowing brother-in-law’s leg. My sister, still standing, was shrieking to her husband, who did not look amused, “Pedal harder, Taylor! You are not pedaling hard enough to go anywhere!
Goddamnit! Pedal HARDER! Get us back to the dock
!” In her hand was a large piece of blue plastic, which, when she had gotten into the boat, was the back of her seat—until it snapped off in one solid piece as soon as they’d floated thirty feet away. In the rear of the boat, David’s whole head was a brilliant red as tears streamed down his face as he repeatedly screamed and sobbed, “We’re sinking! We’re sinking! There are sharks in the water!
We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die
!”

And then there was Nick, who, as my sister’s family continued to pedal into another revolution, simply looked at my husband and me pedaling quietly by and mouthed one word to us: “
Help.
”

He just might be back again next year.

Dear Whoever Has My iPhone:

I’m sure you thought it was weird, finding an iPhone lying in the middle of the street last night, nestled in its tiny black leather case, just sitting there on the asphalt. I would have thought it was weird, too, maybe even funny. How often do you see something like that? It’s almost as common as finding a baby on the street, except an iPhone is a lot more fun to play with.

That’s what I would have thought, too, but when I woke up this morning and realized that my iPhone wasn’t in my purse, car, or coat jacket, I knew something was seriously, seriously wrong. I jumped into my car and raced back to where we parked last night, and I scoured the street. It was nowhere in sight.

Then my sister called me on the house phone, and apparently you butt-dialed her last night at 2:45
A.M
. for three minutes while you walked around with my iPhone crammed in your pants somewhere. If it’s still there, kindly take it out. So, I’m sure the first thing you did this morning, aside from moving my iPhone away from your privates—I mean, I don’t know how much radiation comes off that thing, but if it’s possible
that you can kill bees just by turning it on, do you really want to take that chance with things that should stay uncooked in your shorts?—was notice that there’s a listing under “Lost & Found” on Craigslist for my iPhone, in which I include not only my email address, so you can let me know that you have it, but the words “REWARD OFFERED.”

And I’m serious about that. I could certainly spot you a breakfast for doing something very nice and thoughtful by returning my iPhone; in fact, I’d be delighted to.

How about breakfast and coffee? Even something complicated that Starbucks would charge extra for. Hey, my treat—after all, you’re doing me the favor, remember! No arguments!

But I just checked my email, and nothing. I realize it may be too early for you to arise and sober up a little—I mean, judging by the phone call to my sister’s, you were up pretty late. I’m sure it will take a couple of minutes for you to figure out you found my iPhone, discover that you desperately want to return it, then run through a series of logical deductions and immediately go to Craigslist, which would be the reasonable place that someone who had lost their iPhone would list a “Lost” ad. “Lost” ad with “REWARD OFFERED,” you know. Make sure you see that!

It’s okay. I have time. I know how it is. I was in college once and on occasion found myself wandering the streets at two forty-five in the morning, finding iPhones and whatnot that some unfortunate soul had dropped because she was too stressed to realize it was in her lap, not in her pocket, and she stood up and, well, you know the rest, right? iPhone in the street. Oldest story in the book.

So I just checked my email again and I guess you’re sleeping a little bit longer, which is fine, it’s fine. I’m cool with that. Because I’m sure as soon as you’re able, you’ll email me and I’ll
email you back to ask you under what circumstances you found the phone and what my case looks like, because, after all, there is a REWARD OFFERED, and I can’t be running around, giving rewards to everyone who found an iPhone last night, you know. And I need to make sure it’s not one of those Russian mobster “Meet me at the gas station and give me the REWARD OFFERED first and then I’ll give you the iPhone” sort of deals, because you can’t be too careful. I have to watch out for myself, although I am quite appreciative of your potential willingness to even meet at the gas station, I sure am.

You’re a late sleeper, huh? Maybe you’re having dreams about returning the iPhone you found in the street to its rightful owner because that’s THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Because I think it’s probably pretty obvious that no one would just go out and throw an iPhone into the street and walk away, right? Right? I mean, it’s not like anyone has a fight with their boyfriend on an iPhone and gets back at him by whipping the phone out into space like an engagement ring or something. No one would treat an iPhone like that. It’s a treasure. I don’t know of one person who would. I took good care of it; why on earth would I throw it on the ground? I stood in line for hours to get it. I had my favorite songs on it. Seriously, I had 750 pictures of my dog on that phone, not to mention some private photos I took of myself in a hat I had custom-made for me by a girl named Paula on Etsy, in case you looked.
I know
. I know, it’s not a great photograph, I know that. None of them are. But I was trying to look tough and be funny; it’s a hunting hat, get it, with a deer embroidered on it? She did a good job with that hat. I still have the hat! That didn’t fall out of my lap onto the street. Still have the hat. So, no, that’s not what I look like regularly, not at all. I look like that mainly because it is hard to take your own picture with an iPhone; it is not like a regular
camera at all. Did you know that? You just have to guess where the button is and keep touching it and touching it around the area you think it might be and, yes, it can get frustrating, and, yes, you can get hand cramps because that’s the hand where my carpal tunnel is the worst, so that’s why I was yelling in some of those pictures. But I was yelling at myself in those pictures, not at the iPhone and certainly not at anybody else, so it should not be an indication of my character or person, not at all. I’m a nice person most of the time. Eighty percent of the time. Maybe 76 percent of the time. In almost all of my iPhone pictures,
I am being nice
. In fact, if you flip through those photos, as I’m sure you might have—not saying that you don’t have any respect for the privacy of the person who was clearly careless enough to get out of her car with an iPhone on her lap, not at all, I’m sure you do, but curiosity baits us all—you’ll see that I take photos of happy, jocular things, demonstrating my multifaceted interests, hobbies, and things I see as curiosities.

After all, can a girl who has 750 photos of her little dog—who you may notice is sometimes wearing accessories, such as glasses and hats—on her phone be all that bad? She certainly can’t be as bad as someone who doesn’t deserve to have their phone returned and loses it to someone who instead does something nefarious with it, right? But, no, you probably won’t see any pictures on that phone of me building houses with Habitat for Humanity or volunteering in Central America, holding open the mouths of tykes while aiding Doctors Without Borders as they fix the cleft palates of little children. Probably not on that phone, but I did give them twenty-five dollars once, I just didn’t think to take a picture of me donating online. I’m sure it was used to fix a palate. Or at least part of one.

But if you wonder whether I took the picture of the girl sitting on the curb with her butt crack hanging out while her
boyfriend was breaking up with her, no, I did not take that. My friend thought that was funny, and in a way it was. She really needed a belt. But even if I tried to tell her, I doubt she could have heard me over her racking sobs.

All right, I took the picture, but listen, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, you know? I saw the crack rising up and I just snapped, I didn’t even think. It was during the 24 percent of the time when I’m maybe not so nice. It was like seeing the Loch Ness monster or something similar, no one will believe you unless you offer proof. Now I have proof. So when I tell the story, I can offer a visual, and people believe me. That a girl who is very busy having her life destroyed by someone she loved can be too distracted to know that she is slipping out of her clothes.